Chemical fingerprinting of a furniture waste landfill fire: parent and alkylated PAHs, organophosphates and environmental-health risk assessments

Fires at furniture-waste storage sites are an under-researched source of persistent organic contaminants. This study characterized 13 charred furniture-waste samples collected after a landfill fire in Tychy, Poland, using GC–MS to determine parent and alkylated PAHs and organophosphate esters (OPEs), and to perform screening-level environmental and human-health assessments. The sum of the PAHs ranged from 34.56 to 3031.86 µg/g, with the highest burden in TM7; the maximum benzo(a)pyrene-equivalent concentration was 155.31 µg/g. The thermal fingerprint of the fire was reflected by the dominance of 5-ring PAHs in the most intensely burned material and by altered alkylated-PAH ratios in the fire core. TCiPP, TPhP and TCP were detected in all samples, with TPhP reaching 43.97 mg/g. Furthermore, the systematic identification of abietane derivatives, including dehydroabietic acid, aldehyde, and methyl ester, verified the extensive thermal transformation of coniferous softwood matrices within the burned furniture materials. Under the equilibrium, no-attenuation water-phase screening scenario, source-zone pore-water BaP-equivalent concentrations ranged from 0.24 to 5.53 µg/L and calculated cancer-risk estimates ranged from 2.78×10 −6 to 6.50×10⁻ 5 . Under the upper-bound direct-contact scenario (100 mg/day incidental soil-plus-dust ingestion), total cancer risk ranged from 9.20×10 −7 to 1.39×10 −4 , with TM7 exceeding 1×10 −4 . Ecological risk quotients for BaP ranged from 1.21×10 3 to 4.73×10 4 . The results identify post-fire furniture waste as a priority source for containment and monitoring; water-phase estimates are conservative screening outputs and require confirmation by leachate and groundwater measurements.